When I travel, it's always with beer in mind. So when I came to Salt Lake, The Bayou was an obvious choice. I was only in town for one night, so decided to eat at Red Iguana (yummmm) before coming here for beer. The beer selection was really good (I don't quite remember numbers) considering Utah liquor laws are about 200 years behind. The live band playing was great, I seem to remember a great Black Keys cover. The service was pretty good. The layout of the tables wasn't too strategic, I was practically bumping into the table next door every time I got up; if you're looking for intimacy, this probably isn't the place. All in all, a pretty good beer bar - the best, I imagine, in all of Utah (whatever that's worth). I wish I had stolen a coaster though, I love coasters..

I have been coming to SLC from Philadelphia 3 or 4 times a year for the past 4 or 5 years, and once I found it I have made it a point to hit it every time I am here. It is a reasonable walk from the downtown hotels, even in the very cold (like today, where temp is 10 F). Beer list is very strong, particularly on the hard-to-find-in-this-part-of-the-country Belgians. Price not too bad for what they are selling, for instance a Rochefort 10 was $10, most of the others in the $6 or $7 range. I have not been there when it is terribly crowded, given all the concrete and metal I would imagine it gets pretty loud. Have not tried the food. For good beer experience, best I have found in SLC.

Great atmosphere, and a popular location. Had an excellent variety of beer, organized by local breweries and beer type, which is helpful. While they had a large selection of IPA's, I struck out three times with my order. Would have liked to see more variety in IPA's from around the country. Also, would have liked a server with a little more beer knowledge. Would have liked to see more choices of beer that can't be found in the local liquor stores. Overall, great place for the beer advocate, however; it doesn't compare to some places on the east coast.

Well that certainly is one big beer list. Huge amount of beers from all over the world with a massive variety of styles. Lots of beers on tap, with most being from Utah, of course. The bottle list also has what seems like as many Epic beers as you will see anywhere, if you are looking for them. Service was mature and mellow. Decor was a little bit less polished than the Beerhive. Food was decent. I feel like I'd want to eat there one more time to be able to accurately comment on it. With so many beers available, you can't go wrong at all by visiting. A good stop.

The Bayou has an excellent selection of beers (very detailed beer/wine menu) and the staff is very knowledgeable on all of them. They carry all of the Salt Lake breweries' beers, so if you're in town for a visit and not able to make it to all of the breweries in SLC, try this place for a "sampler" of all the SLC beers. You won't be disappointed. There is also a wide selection of California beers, as well as lots of Belgian style beers to choose from.

For food, the pizzas are great, and most of the sandwiches are going to be delicious as well. If you want to play a game of pool, there are 2 tables in the back of the restaurant.

During a recent business trip to SCL, I visited this place with a colleague, based on several recommendations. Easy to find, the parking is sparse, and we ended up with street parking on another block. The atmosphere inside, however, is spectacular. While not particularly large, establishment seems roomy, with high ceilings and plenty of booths and tables. The bar is long, and stretches along one side of the restaurant. New Orleans style food is the centerpiece of the menu, and I particularly enjoyed the gumbo (although it did need a few shakes of extra hot sauce). The beer list is extraordinary...a thick book of beers...heavy on Belgian and local brews. The prices for beer were shockingly reasonable...other places have charged double what the Bayou listed. The tap selection was all local, including a great cask ale. The wait staff was busy, and was understandably not as chatty as I would have liked. Still, our server seemed to know her stuff regarding the beer list. The Bayou WILL be on my list of food establishments (along with another trip to the Red Iguana) for my next trip to Salt Lake City.

While touring Downtown SLC, The Bayou was only 2 blocks walking distance from my Hotel. Perfect. Came here @ 10pm and there was a 30 minute wait for a table. With one seat left at the bar (in the corner), I took it! Ended up meeting an enthused craft beer drinker as well and shared a brew at the end of my time at the Bayou.

The place was PACKED the night I came in (on a Sunday night). At the bar, looked over their extensive beer list with more than enough brews to pick from. I had trouble with this. Started with one on-tap and then enjoyed two locals beers not available in the MO Market (Deschutes & Epic). You could tell half the people in the middle of the bar just came off the slopes for they were still in their gear. Very friendly and inviting place.

Not sure what the deal was but asking for another round of beer was tough extremely tough for the bartender to grasp. Of course he was busy pour beer and making drinks for servers, but then hire another bartender or have another one come in during these late night shifts! Was very disappointed at the amount of time it took to get each beer. Luckily the "Bayou Beer Book" kept my focus away from this but still have to downgrade.

Hundreds of beers available? I have to say, their "multiple lists-by-style" were unbelievable! Tried to pick out a beer from each list but didn't have time.. All were updated as well. Nice!

Didn't eat anything but two things that were suggested to me were their Crawfish and any of their Cajun dishes. While it is a Cajun influenced restaurant, you have to try something new! I just was in the mood for beer.

Welcome to BeerVana! This places has what you want if in Salt Lake City and a definite must. Just make sure you make friends with the bartender/server!

Stopped in around 9:30 on a Sunday night. The interior is surprising large and nice compared to the exterior and surrounding (run-down) industrial area close to downtown.

Sat at the bar and had excellent, attentive service by two well-informed male bartenders.

The informative beer menu is laid out by style with style descriptions. In terms of beers available, I would have to guess that they had every beer that is available in Utah (including Cantillon which I was told they usually get around summer and was gone by now). They had lots of Epic beers as well as all the local stuff. Also had Jolly Pumpkin, Firestone Walker, and Deschutes for those traveling from the east.

I was keeping it local and had $4 pint drafts of Uinta Kolsch and Desert Edge IPA. Both were excellent. They also had a large bottle of Uinta oak imperial pumpkin which they sold by the glass.

I had a bowl of the gumbo and as a Gumboadvocate snob can say it was good. I prefer mine a shade darker.

I'll be back and would recommend this as a great stop for anyone looking to sample Utah craft beers in a single location.

It has taken some time for me to formulate this review.I have been to the Bayou about 2 dozen times.

The food is great. Not the best creole or Cajun inspired food ive had but better than most. The house salad dressing is great. They make a great burger. I dont care for the gumbo here, the Rue seems burnt and the charcoal flavor dominates my palate.But the Jambalaya is really good.

The wait on a Friday night it too much for me to take.

Beer selection is one of the best in utah. Around Christmas they get tons of seasonal beers in as well.

Now the cons, because of the local liquor laws; all beer must be purchased from the state at the price it sets. They give no discount to bars for pricing. This makes the beer prices pretty high on many imports and micro brews.

Also the service here is godawful. I have waited on many night while my server talks with co-workers for extended periods of time. The guys in the nice suits that are drinking budlight get refills on the cheap beers right away. While my ski bum buddies and I are waiting for a 20$ beer refill.This has happened to us on several trips here.

My advice is to sit at the bar so you dont have to beg the server for a second round.

The food was amazing. Had Crawfish Etouffe and it was great. The style of food is Creole and they do it well. They also have an incredible beer selection. I was able to go local, national, and world. I stuck local and had some great beers. The atmosphere is nice. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable. They have a patio. The outside of the place is kinda nondescript but it is a good find. I would recommend that you seek out the Bayou to eat or just to hold down the bar for a while. I wish that I spent more time here while I was in Salt Lake City.

Came in on a Thursday night and sat outside. Nice outside seating area with cover and misters. Helped with the 90+ degree temps. Lots to choose from. Waitperson was very knowledgeable about selections and their likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, Utah liquor laws screws availablity of decent drafts (nothing above 5%, I believe), so I had to stick with bottles. Good selection of local brews, which are apparently hard to find. Food was above average. Definitely worth a return trip if you don't mind drinking bottled or below 5% ABV draft beer.

Hands down the best place for beer in SLC, at least that I found. And quite good food to boot. The caveat is that I had really low expectations for both food and beer in SLC and I was taken back by this place. Spent 3 evenings here and had a great time.

Atmosphere is pretty good, though since it is the best beer bar in SLC it gets crowded around 6-6:30. Really crowded. Far more crowded than if it were located somewhere other than SLC, but I guess they have the quality beer market cornered. Staff were fairly knowledge but alternated between really dumbing descriptions down or being aloof and didn't come across as very personable.

I just wish the bottles weren't so expensive. I could get many of the bottles beer they had available around me as a pint for less than half the price. Oh well, you get what you get.

Was told time and again that this was the place to visit for craft beer in Salt Lake. Glad that I had the opportunity to visit. The brick walls and warm setting are inviting, especially on an 18 degree day in Salt Lake. About 20 draft choices and a huge bottle list provide the tough decisions that us beer geeks love. Lots of focus on the classic Belgian & German beers make up a good portion of the list. In addition, there are some great west coast choices.. Based on some crazy state law all higher ABV choices are only available in bottle.

Menu was a combination of Cajun classics and typical pub food. I had heard great things about the Oyster Po-Boy so I went with that option. Truth be told, the food was average at best. If a place claims to be have Cajun food, then you simple can't serve a po-boy on a squishy white bread roll..

The service was actually very good. Wait staff was knowledgeable about the beer menu. A good place and one I would visit while in Salt Lake. The food keeps it a cut below some of the top craft beer locations that I've had the pleasure of visiting.

Great beer bar in the unlikely spot of SLC. Nice decor, brick and wooden bar that looks fairly new. I was in town for a night on business and was able to get two sessions in at Bayou.

Beer is very good and could be considered outstanding given the location. I had a local IPA by Desert Edge called UPA that was rock solid as well as a bottle of the Boulevard Brewing Saison and a Hop Rising IPA that was really good as well.

Service was friendly both nights and the bartender was very knowledgeable and was handy with suggestions.

Food was a strong suit I had the jambalaya and a the next day I had a house pizza that was out of this world.

If you are in town fork over the $5 member fee and check this place out.

First of all the place looks great, mixed modern and classic pub. Had a spacious bar and a small beer garden.

Selection is a beer heaven. Easily up there with any beer bar as far as selection goes, but they were out of stock of a few I asked for. I wanted to try Rogue Chipolte and I was dying for Obsidian. Tood bad.

Food: We tried a lot of different things. Most everyting was great. A great job of classic cajun pubfare.

Prices were decent. Some may of thought pricye but this is above avergae food for a pub and the beers were accuralety priced.

Our night was cut short due to power going out. I was dissapointed. I planned on sessioning myself to sleep there. Great place and best beer bar in STL by far.

This social club has the only decent bottled beer selection in town, and the menu is incorrect most of the time. I can't tell you how many times I picked 2-3 beers in a row and ALL of them were not in stock.

Service is atrocious. More effort is put into hiring young females than competent servers. Atmosphere is contemporary beer bar in nature with decor, but it's hard to overcome the shortcomings in service and selection. They're only in business because there is no real competition for the craft beer consumer who wants normal ABV beers in SLC.

We simply ordered snacks here. It was time for a beer but not entirely time for lunch. We were on a mission to get to Park City.The first two beers we requested were not available, so we went mainstream and found the Westmalle Tripel. Nice score in the middle of an otherwise seemingly beer wasteland of sorts.

The wings and quesadillas were tasty as well as the gumbo. The service was lack luster, and could use some polishing, but for the most part I enjoyed myself. The waitress needs an attitude adjustment of sortsNice beer on cask!

This is one of my favorite places on the planet. It could be the fact that they have over 200 beers on their menu, or the fact that they have the best margherita pizza this side of New Orleans. Whatever the case may be, This is a spectacular beer destination. The only less than stellar point has been the service, which certainly isn't bad, but could be better, and more friendly. You've got to try their sweet potato fries, and they actually have Sam Adams Utopias on the menu.

This is a pretty big place that's not hard to get to in downtown SLC but it's easy to miss as you drive by. It has two pool tables in the back. The place has the old brick retro look, pretty authentic but seems to be very clean and a decent atmosphere as restaurants go, somewhat dark, busy and kind of noisy in a good way. The waitress was nice but a bit rushed at first. She seemed a tad irritated with all my beer questions, but then she really went out of her way to assist with some things and seemed to warm up. The guy at the door takes care of seating and the "membership". $5 gets you 2 weeks but $17 buys you a year and a choice of "free" tee shirt or a couple pint glasses. The regular beer selection takes up both sides of a menu sheet and then there's another sheet full of "non-regulars". I estimate about 40 belgians in bottle, 60 lagers and with many (20+) regular drafts well representing the regional micro brews. Another 100 or more wheats , browns, pales and IPAs, porters and stouts, and six barleywines all in bottles. The selection was super for bottled beer assuming they really had most of it and we had no misses that night. We did the cajun cuisine and found it to be very good and enough to keep you full for a day or two! A bowl of the gumbo would be a meal for most. The red beans and rice and the jumbalaya were excellent with tons of ham and sausage and crawfish. They had a cask ale available although I didn't care for it much. Service was very quick despite a fair crowd (although it was only a Monday night). I didn't see any real holes here except maybe being overwhelmed by the selection. I also was a little underwhelmed by the cask offering. I had heard that the Desert Edge Pale Ale would be very good but it was a bit skunky here on cask. But they seem to represent the local brewers very well and have lots of other unusual choices to explore. Don't miss this place when you visit SLC!

It was like a million degrees out there, but with the lack of humidity it felt actually pretty decent, and even though it was a relatively long walk from Squatters to the Bayou in a neighborhood that would look dead on a saturday night, let alone a Sunday afternoon where just about everything was closed. I was quite releived to see this place was open when we finally got there.

It was probably the first time I ever got charged admission into a restaurant. A fiver at the door wasn't going to keep me out, I was thirsty!

Interesting atmosphere, it looked too clean to be a dive bar, and a bit too dark to be a restaurant. Worked for me just fine. I would have liked to have sat at the bar and chat with some of the locals, but not this time I guess. A classical guitarist was playing what I thought was a piece by Leo Brouwer, but anyway it gave a great vibe to the place, even though pretty much no one was listening to the guy.

Our friendly and savvy waitress led us over to our table and gave us menus. Frankly, we were still a bit stuffed from the appetizer at Squatters but we still ordered what ended up being a ton of food, some popcorn catfish and a couple of oyster po'boys, very good but we weren't able to finish it all.

Looking at the Beer menu I was hit with a dilemma that I wouldn't exactly classify as moral or ethical, but difficult nonetheless. The menu had some really interesting imports, and even moreso were the ones our waitress listed off. But hey, I was in Utah, not likely to return anytime soon (unless we have to audit this supplier again), and they had a ton of Beers on tap that I never even heard of before. I guess the somewhat premium prices on the imports made me stick with locals, but they turned out to be less than impressive, for the most part. That Wasatch Devestator was easily the best in show there. Unfortunately, they just ran out of the Uinta Barleywine. But anyway, believe it or not, we were so stuffed from the food that we left right after eating because we felt way too stuffed.

Highly recommended, for both selection and food. Could easily rival Beer bars in towns much larger and with way more liberal Beer laws.

A beer bar that charges a private membership of 10 a year - otherwise, no admission...though you do get a shirt or two pint glasses with it.

A long bar with seats in the back. Big place. Many local beers on tap. Bottle selection of many imports, including some harder to find ones - and quite a few American craft beers on the beer menu. All rather pricey. Too bad that they were out of quite a few of the hard to find imports. They need to keep the list updated. That said, they still had a magnificent list.

Service was very good. Bar staff was very attentive and quite knowledgeable.

Hit up the Bayou on a visit to SLC. Sucks that you have to shell out the $5 for a temporary membership, but it's well worth the price.

Parking is scarce, but once you get inside the atmosphere is excellent. Brick walls and beer signs with lots of relaxing jazz music coming out the speakers. Service was very good, no complaints here. Food was excellent, I highly recommend the blackened catfish that was sufficiently spicy...paired well with the hoppiness from my Uinta Anniv. Barleywine.

The selection was, as far as I can tell, the best in Utah, let alone Salt Lake City. About 150+ bottles (Full Sail, Rogue, german & belgian imports, locals, etc...). The tap selection could be a little better, but taking into account Utah's wacky beer laws, it's as good as it gets. They had some Uinta Pale Ale on cask the time I went.

Major downside is the price. Bottles start at $5 and the entrees are ~$15-18 apiece. Pair that with the membership and a poor grad student like me is left with a hurting bank account.

It can be difficult to get a seat here, as I went back for a second night and the wait was over an hour...bar was too crowded for me to fight for elbow room & enjoy a meal. Nevertheless, Th Bayou excellent stop for any beer lover travelling to the land of 4% ABV beer.

Walking in on my first visit, the m.d.s was to the immediate left and the young lady manning the podium demanded to know if I had a membership. "Uh oh, here we go," I thought to myself. "No. What now, a quick about face?" I asked. "Oh no," she replied, "Five dollars for a temporary two-week membership." I paid my fin, she took down all of my pertinents, but I was not given anything. When I inquired, she assured me that all of my information would be entered into their electronic database that night and that I would be all set on my next visit. Oakle doakle!

I got seated at the "L"-shaped marble-topped bar on a left oblique from Selma Avenue. A three-piece jazz band flailed away in the right corner by the window overlooking the street. I found myself mesmerized by the 8.5" x 11" laminated sheet which detailed their available beers in two columns on each side. I exhaled, realizing that I might survive my visit to the land of 3.2 beer after all. I started with a Uinta IPA on draft and began to scope out the scenery. In front of me was a color chalkboard that reminded us that this was "Not the same beer your dad used to drink!" Actually, with a wife in Chico, CA and a beer-loving older son, Pops was pretty progressive during his lifetime. Cheers, old man, R.I.P.! There was lots of exposed brick, ducting, rafters, and support beams throughout the space. The centerline was mainly high tables and chairs. The right wall was lined with booth seating fronted by tables. A couple of pool tables were all of the way aft. Another sign proclaimed, "Welcome to Beervana!"

Flash forward to the following late afternoon/early evening. I arrived and was asked for another $5.00 membership and I explained that I had paid the young woman on duty the previous evening. There was nothing in the computer and they seemed not to know what their staff looked like, since as both a former security patrolman and a writer, I have a flair for description and they claimed to have no idea who might have been on the podium. My blood pressure began to rise and I was about to walk out when the manager relented and let me in, especially since it was my last night in town and the odds of my returning were slim and reducing. Dave was a helpful server, but the rest of the staff seemed aloof and stand-offish. I really felt like I got jobbed on that one and I recommend giving this place a wide berth if you plan to visit SLC, UT. I hope never to have to go back.

Why? Because the Bayou loves beer. You can get it all here. If you can buy it at a Utah Liquor Store (the only place in Utah to buy real beer) then you can probably get it at the Bayou. The beer menu is a large sheet, front and back, filled with beer choices all categorized by style. It's a little overwhelming and I'm grateful for it. There's absolutely nowhere in Utah like it and if you're a beer drinker then you're completely, absolutely, absurdly missing out if you haven't visited this place.

Okay, enough worship. Onto actual information.

Service is pretty good, but more importantly, the employees are knowledgeable about beer. You can ask questions and get answers. The servers seem a bit thinly spread so you have to grab your server if you want attention. And don't think about separating a check because they're going to avoid it like the plague. Understandable but still annoying.

The atmosphere is a hodgepodge of people of all ages and demographics coming together in one great place. There are lots of common spirits available the bar too, if you should require liquor for some misguided reason. Food is good from what I can remember [after an entire Chimay]. Jazz is common and the lighting is low.